Myst creator Cyan Worlds announces Kickstarter for Obduction | Hacker News Reader

Myst creator Cyan Worlds announces Kickstarter for Obduction

kickstarter.com

139 pointstimkeller35 comments

For those wondering why the introduction is so long, I'm betting they realize that the opening Cyan logo animation and music instantly transports many people back to firing up Myst for the first time 20 years ago with a nearly identical animation. There's a huge emotional attachment there for me, and probably for anyone who played the game as a kid and now has $25 to spare to bring back some great memories of a different era. In fact, there may be millions of people who are already sold on the idea just from that opening 20 seconds, and they only need a tiny fraction of those folks to reach their funding goal -- best of luck to them.

This is one of those projects I would back even if there were no reward simply because I want to live in a world where Cyan is making Myst-like games again. Very excited to see this.

Yeah, I'm one of those people. I was hesitant to click on the link after the bad impression that Myst V and Uru left. But when they played the old intro I got a little chill. I can't stay mad at you Cyan!

Absolutely. I am thrilled they're going back to making games that give that sense of lost curiosity. Even before Myst there was The Manhole, which I remember visiting as a little kid, very cool.

Someone made a great word that I forgot and can't find that described this feeling. Of being unstuck in time and space, a sort of vertigo upon realization that the universe is huge. Cyan Worlds manage to nail that effect while removing fear or tension. It's a childlike feeling that is rarely focused on, and they're masters of it.

Heh, I spent too many words in that, but Rand had trouble describing it too, so I don't feel too bad.

This article came out a month ago about Cyan and Myst. It is a very good read - http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9713372/looking-back-gam...

I'd love to see an indie studio like this providing something more than pre-orders and deluxe editions to backers. If we're not getting any equity for the money, at least the product should be freely released upon completion.

I was wondering the same thing. 10 k allows to be credited as supporting producer (together with a dinner) but producers get an interest over sales.

> If we're not getting any equity for the money, at least the product should be freely released upon completion.

Whoa, what? You've just described every single Kickstarter. Sounds like you have a problem with Kickstarter, not this campaign.

Isn't WeFunder your target?

>You've just described every single Kickstarter.

Not at all. There have been numerous campaigns that released their product to the community upon reaching their goal, like Cards Against Humanity, The Pirate Bay - AFK documentary, the Open Goldberg Variations, and many more projects.

http://www.kickstarter.com/pages/creativecommons

Notice that none of those are video games. It's great that lots of creative work is being licensed under CC BY-NC-SA, or even CC BY in a few cases. But most of those have something else they can sell later, like a physical book or cards, or are otherwise able to completely fund the entire process from the pledges. So they were able to open-source the product, have a free version, and still make enough to survive. That's not quite the same thing as completely releasing an entire game for free, although they may appear similar at first glance.

Investment crowdfunding was, until very recently, highly illegal. It's present legal standing is complex and most crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter, have deliberately avoided it, for good reason.

A freely-released product would be very expensive for the developer. The crowdfunding would have to cover all of the development costs, since the project would have no further direct revenue. There's probably a clever way to fund a free-to-play or DLC-supported platform that way, but that only makes sense for a subset of games.

For some strange reason most people in Germany misunderstood Crowdfunding with Crowdinvesting and so we have a lot of Crowdinvesting platforms like Companisto, Seedmatch, Bergfürst...

Your "equity" takes the form of the experience of a product you wanted that otherwise never would have existed. It may not be liquid, but it has value.

I'm surprised how good this looks. Cyan hasn't really been able to produce anything of high quality or good taste for the past 10 years (and I say this as a huge fan of some of their earlier games). What little they show here though looks both tasteful and intriguing.

I hope this will be a turning point for this struggling company.

Yeah, their most recent efforts are some really shitty-looking mobile games: http://cyan.com/games/stoneship/ and http://cyan.com/games/bug-chucker/

They've been struggling under the shadow of Myst. Hopefully this will get them back on track.

This project does seem to play to their strengths more - during the Uru era, they got hugely involved in the technical side of things (running an MMO game, creating their engine in house, stuff like that) - and their major successes were almost entirely graphics and story, with only the minimum tech needed to pull that off.

That's quite a visual nod to Zork, there.

My thoughts too.

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here"

I'm excited that this is happening, but I do wish they would have shown more than just concept art and the vague intro to the video. I can't tell from the Kickstarter page whether they've put significant effort into this yet or not (I hope that they have).

I think their philosophy has always been to show as little as possible for as long as possible, to avoid spoiling things... I get the impression that they have a story and a concept but no actual gameplay or content.

This looks amazing - I'd love to back it. Too bad it's not available on Linux. Oh well.

"Additional platforms" is listed as a stretch goal. Linux might be a big bet in a year or two with SteamOS, but right now, wrangling Unreal 4's third-tier PC OS support is probably not the best time investment for a small studio considering that Linux only has 0.93% in the August Steam hardware survey.

Regardless, we can hope!

There's a bit of a selection bias using the steam hardware survey - I'd bet that a greater proportion of windows gamers than linux gamers are using steam.

I suspect there are also a lot of Linux users who keep around Windows to run Steam and games in general, and who happened to be in Windows when they ran that survey.

Each time the survey appears you can elect whether or not to participate. If you are a Linux user currently dropped into Windows to whom this issue of OS identity matters, you can opt out.

True, but that still then requires that they then reboot into Linux for the sole purpose of completing the survey, and it assumes that they can install the Linux version of Steam on the distro they are running so that they can take part in the survey in the first place.

zomg, I loved Myst. One of the real few highlights of my gaming life along with Elite and Quake.

I tried firing up Myst a couple years back, I was shocked to realize it was all still images in small sizes, I would have sworn that I used to be completely immersed in a real size 3D world :)

I'm not expecting a AAA title, but are they going to be able to deliver for only $1.1 million?

How much is a license for the Unreal Engine?

Starts at $99 but mostly case by case depending on various stuff. http://unrealdb.com/what-does-an-unreal-engine-license-cost/

Little tiny 2 man shops can afford unreal.

http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/licensing/commercial_license...

>If you create a games or commercial applications using UDK for sale or distribution to an end-user or client, or if you are providing services in connection with a UDK based game or application, the per-seat option does not apply. Instead the license terms for this arrangement are US$99 up-front, and a 0% royalty on you or your company’s first US$50,000 in UDK related revenue from all your UDK based games or commercial applications, and a 25% royalty on UDK related revenue from all your UDK based games or commercial applications above US$50,000. UDK related revenue includes, but is not limited to, monies earned from: sales, services, training, advertisements, sponsorships, endorsements, memberships, subscription fees, in-game transactions, rentals and pay-to-play. You or your company will only need one commercial license to cover all the UDK based games or commercial applications you develop.

>Here are some examples:

>A team creates a game with UDK that they intend to sell. After six months of development, they release the game through digital distribution and they earn US$60,000 in the first calendar quarter after release. Their use of UDK during development requires no fee. At some point prior to the UDK Applications’srelease they would to secure a royalty-bearing commercial UDK license with its US$99 license fee. After earning US$60,000, they would be required to pay Epic US$2,500 (US$0 on the first US$50,000 in revenue, and US$2,500 on the next US$10,000 in revenue). On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.

It's amazing that it's been 20 years already since Myst. Really hope to see this project funded and shipped!

Wadsworth constant in full effect. It takes a full two minutes to get to any kind of point.

Yeah, unfortunately they didn't implement any strong understanding of marketing into their video. I was excited to see what the creators of Myst were up to - and the video introduction was "neat" - but it dragged on. Their $25 price point, they need to convince 40,000 people to pledge to make their minimum - and sure that video will make general gamers super excited to share this video/campaign page.

If not Linux, and if they were doing Unreal 3, then there was a hope for Android....

Wonder if they will develop the game with the oculus rift in mind.

From the FAQ:

> We are excited about Oculus Rift (we have a dev kit) and VR in general, and we'd love to have a stretch goal that heads that direction.

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